Copilot Business: only €9.11 more inside the Business Premium bundle
Separately, Copilot Business costs €27.30 per user and month. Anyone who needs Business Premium anyway pays an additional €9.11 in the bundle. What Copilot takes on day to day, when it does not pay off, and which security features the Premium licence brings.
As a separate licence, Microsoft 365 Copilot Business costs €27.30* per user per month. Anyone who needs Business Premium anyway and buys both together pays an additional €9.11* for Copilot in arithmetic terms. That difference is not a limited-time discount; since July 2026 it is the regular price.
This article sets out what Copilot takes off your hands day to day, when it does not pay off, and why the security features in Business Premium are the real gain in this calculation.
Prices net per user/month on an annual term with monthly billing, as of September 2026. Source: ALSO Cloud Marketplace.
Copilot Chat is included – what you pay for is data access
Copilot Chat comes with the Microsoft 365 plans at no extra charge. It researches, drafts and summarises, but it draws solely on publicly available web content and on whatever employees paste into the chat themselves. It does not know the company it runs in.
The paid licence removes precisely that boundary: Microsoft 365 Copilot reaches your existing content through Microsoft Graph, and only the parts each individual is authorised to see. Anyone who cannot open a file will not receive it from Copilot either. That is the whole of the difference, and it weighs more than it first appears to.
Where the licence saves time in daily work
After a morning out of the office, 60 unread messages are waiting. Copilot summarises the threads, names the open points and drafts replies in your usual tone.
Teams takes the minutes, groups them by topic and records commitments. Anyone joining late can ask where things stand without interrupting the room.
A new quote grows out of three earlier ones and the notes from the call. The first draft is ready in minutes; checking and correcting still happens by hand.
The difference shows most clearly when something has to be found again. A question such as “What did we agree with this client in 2024?” searches mailbox, SharePoint and Teams at once, without anyone having to remember which folder holds the answer.
The benefit depends less on the features than on the order beneath them. Where file storage has grown over the years and permissions are unclear, Copilot finds either too little or too much. Both become apparent immediately.
The calculation
| Licensing | Price per user/month |
|---|---|
| Business Premium | €20.01* |
| Copilot Business separately | €27.30* |
| Business Premium + Copilot Business | €29.12* |
| Effective additional cost for Copilot in the bundle | €9.11* |
The bundle is also available with Business Standard (€21.38*) and Business Basic (€25.47*). Those licences, however, lack the security features discussed further below.
Anyone who needs Business Premium anyway pays, in the combined Business Premium and Copilot package, an additional €9.11* per user and month for Copilot Business. Copilot in the bundle therefore comes to roughly a third of the price of the separately booked Copilot Business licence.
The prices quoted refer to an NCE annual commitment billed monthly. With annual payment in advance, or under time-limited Microsoft promotions, other prices may apply.
Why Business Premium in particular
On 1 July 2026 Microsoft raised the prices of its business plans: Business Basic by roughly 17 per cent, Business Standard by roughly 12 per cent. Business Premium was the only one of the three left untouched. Microsoft attributes the step to the features for artificial intelligence, security and device management added over recent years. Existing contracts continue at the previous price until they next renew.
The gap between Standard and Premium has narrowed as a result. What sits inside that gap is what a company would otherwise have to buy separately:
Conditional access: sign-in only from managed devices, from defined countries, or with a mandatory second factor. The single most effective measure against compromised accounts.
Laptops and smartphones set themselves up, encryption and updates are enforced, and company data can be wiped remotely.
Anti-malware with behavioural detection and incident tracing, managed from the same console as the rest.
Sensitivity labels and rules against data loss. Doubly relevant for Copilot: what is cleanly classified does not surface in the wrong suggestion.
When is Copilot Business not worth it?
To keep the calculation complete: the licence is not worth it everywhere, and it is rarely worth it for an entire workforce.
- Where little work is done with text. On the workshop floor, in production or at the counter, a summarised mailbox is of little use. Frontline licences exist for those roles.
- Where file storage is disordered. Permissions nobody can survey any more are made visible by Copilot, not better. Put them in order first, then switch it on.
- Where nobody accompanies the rollout. Copilot without an hour of instruction stays an expensive button. The use cases have to match the actual working day, otherwise the attempts stop after the second one.
A sensible start therefore usually begins with a small group: the people who write, read and sit in meetings the most. After eight weeks you can judge whether the circle should be widened.
Frequently asked questions
How much does Microsoft 365 Copilot Business cost?
As a separate licence, Copilot Business costs €27.30* per user per month. In the bundle with Business Premium you pay €29.12* instead of €20.01* for Business Premium alone, so the additional cost for Copilot is €9.11*. Since 1 July 2026 the bundle has been a regular licence; prices are net on an annual term with monthly billing, as of September 2026.
Isn’t Copilot already included in Microsoft 365?
What is included is Copilot Chat. It works only with publicly available web content and whatever employees paste into the chat themselves. Only the paid licence reaches mailbox, files, appointments and Teams conversations through Microsoft Graph, and only what each person is already allowed to open.
Does everyone on the team need a Copilot licence?
Usually not. The licence is rarely worth it for an entire workforce, and on the workshop floor, in production or at the counter it is of little use. A sensible start is the people who write, read and sit in meetings the most; after eight weeks you can judge whether the circle should grow.
* Prices net, as of September 2026. Licence prices may have changed since.
Sources
- Prices: ALSO Cloud Marketplace, NCE licences on an annual term with monthly billing, as of September 2026, all amounts net per user and month. Product descriptions: Microsoft 365 Business Premium with Copilot and Microsoft 365 Copilot – plans and pricing. The prices shown there partly refer to annual payment in advance and therefore differ.
- Act Now: Lock in Current Pricing on Microsoft 365 Copilot Business Bundles (Microsoft Community Hub) on the offer running to 30 June 2026 and its move to a regular licence
- The difference between Copilot Chat and Microsoft 365 Copilot (Microsoft Support)
- Microsoft 365 Business Price Increase (Office Watch) on the adjustment of 1 July 2026: Business Basic around 17 per cent, Business Standard around 12 per cent, Business Premium unchanged
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